Speleology
by embroiderama
Summary: Sam’s pushed to the edge by a case, and Dean doesn’t know how to help him.


Title: Speleology

Author: embroiderama

Characters: Dean, Sam (gen)

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: violence

Spoilers: not really

Word Count: 3,125

Feedback: - constructive criticism welcome

Disclaimer: None of the Winchesters belong to me, alas.

Summary: Sam's pushed to the edge by a case, and Dean doesn't know how to help him

This is for a spngleeweek prompt from twitchykris: i _A fic where Dean comes in late to an apartment and sees Sam asleep at the computer. He knows that Sam has not been sleeping for at least four days straight, instead always at the computer working on the case. He thinks about Sam, and his love for Sam, and ends up gently draping his jacket over him ((Sammy's only in one layer:D)) and going to bed. /i _

Many thanks to pheebs1 for betaing this simple story that turned out to be very difficult for me. Any remaining mistakes and weird things are all my fault. She tried.

He never should have let Sam go into the cave first. They'd heard the little girl's cry as soon as they jumped out of the Impala. Dean popped the trunk and grabbed an extra rifle and some silver rounds, but by that time Sam was already racing across the rocks to the cave mouth. Dean heard gunshots as he skidded into the cave a minute later, blinking his eyes to adjust them to the darkness, but by the time he found Sam there was no sign of the creature.

Just Sam, on his knees, with the broken body of a child in his hands. Even from five yards away, Dean could see that they were too late for her, that the scream they'd heard had been her last. Dean ran the beam of his flashlight over the girl's small body and saw that Sam had his hand pressed against her stomach, trying to hold the blood inside her body. His spread hand covered most of her torso.

"Where'd it go?"

"That way." Sam gestured with his free hand toward what looked like an elaborate cave system beyond the cavern they were in. "I think I wounded it, but it took off. Dean, we've gotta get her to a hospital. She's--"

Dean walked over to stand behind Sam and looked at the little girl's gray face, her still, ruined chest. "It's too late, Sammy. We need to get out of here."

"No." Sam shook his head, looking over his shoulder at Dean with a desperate look on his face. "No, we can't leave her here."

Dean sighed and crouched down next to the girl's body, wrapping a hand around Sam's straining wrist. "She's gone. There's nothing we can do for her."

Sam stared at him for a moment, defiance in his eyes, and then looked back at the girl. He slumped back onto his heels, letting his hand fall away from her skin. "We've got to call someone, man. We can't just leave her here. Like this."

"You know we don't need that kind of attention from cops."

"No. Look. They'll think she was attacked by an animal. We don't--we don't have claws, Dean. We couldn't have done this. We'll say we were driving by and heard her scream."

Despite the evident exhaustion, Sam's face showed the kind of resolve that meant Dean wasn't getting his way this time, so he just nodded, took out his cell and headed out of the cave to find a signal. Dean stowed the weapons back in the trunk of the Impala while he talked to the dispatcher at the local Sheriff's department, and when he re-entered the cave Sam was still kneeling at the little girl's side. He had covered her, his XXL hoodie like a blanket over her small body.

His instincts told him to grab Sam and head out of there, steering far clear of the local authorities, but Dean knew he wouldn't be able to accomplish that, short of physical force. Even that was uncertain, with Sam making like an immovable object on the cave floor. Giving himself up to an evening of dodging questions, he walked over and stood behind Sam, resting a hand on his shoulder until he heard sirens approaching on the road.

The sheriff and her deputy had surprisingly few questions for them. Seems there had been quite a few bear attacks in these caves over the years, the town regularly mourning children who had gone lost and been found gutted. Sam said nothing, uncurling himself up from the ground only when the deputy walked over with a body bag.

When the sheriff was done with her few questions and had thanked them for their call, Dean grabbed Sam by his cold arm and nudged him out towards the Impala. "Your knees must ache like a bitch from that rock floor."

"I'm fine."

"Yeah, okay." He started the car, turning the heat on low. "Sheriff says there's a motel down the road a couple miles."

Sam just nodded, so Dean turned the car out onto the road and kept a look-out for the motel, hoped there was a diner or at least a convenience store nearby, too. He needed food and sleep, needed them badly, and he knew Sam had to feel even worse. They'd been on the road for two days, driving cross-country in search of the dark, blood-stained caves Sam saw every time he closed his eyes. Every time Sam fell asleep, he woke up within a half-hour, gasping, with a haunted look on his face.

They'd been too late, too late for this little girl, but there was still work to do. After they got some rest, they could go back out to the caves, do some research to find out what they were dealing with, and take care of it. Keep the kids of this county safe, from one kind of predator at least. Now, if only he could get Sam to look at it that way, instead of as a failure.

Up ahead, he saw the small motel on the left, its sign flashing "VACANCY," and a gas station across the road with a small store attached. Dean pulled into the motel parking lot and fished a new credit card out of the glove compartment. "Here, why don't you go get us a room. I'll go pick up some chow."

Sam nodded. "Get me some coffee, too."

"Sam--" The last thing he needed was more caffeine.

"Not decaf. Please."

"Yeah, whatever," Dean grumbled, heading off across the quiet country highway to the convenience store. Inside the store, he stared into a case of prepared sandwiches, trying to decide how likely they were to induce food poisoning.

"I just made 'em this afternoon, honey," a voice called out from behind the counter. "They're fresh."

Dean looked over to see a middle-aged woman smiling at him, and he nodded in acknowledgement. "Thanks."

He picked out an Italian sub for himself, roast beef for Sam, a couple of pickles, bags of chips, and some donuts for the morning. He dumped it all on the counter, and then held up a hand. "Just a sec."

He grabbed a couple of bottles of water and then walked over to stand in front of the coffee. Damn it, Sam needed to get some solid sleep, had barely slept in two days, going on three, but if Dean didn't get him what he wanted he'd only walk over here himself. Shrugging in temporary defeat, Dean took the biggest cup they had, filled it with coffee, added a few packs of sugar, and headed back over to the counter.

Minutes later, having handed over his $20.76, Dean headed back across the road with his bags of food and water in one hand and Sam's coffee in the other. He saw the Impala now parked in front of room 12A, so he walked over and kicked gently at the bottom of the door with his toe. "Hey, Sammy, let me in." He really hoped he hadn't guessed the wrong room.

Sam opened the door and reached to take the coffee out of Dean's hand before Dean could even get into the room. He peeled back the lid and took a long gulp of the hot liquid.

"Jesus. Crack addict much?"

"Thanks. Hey, they've got wi-fi here. I can download the pictures, try to figure out what that thing is."

"Pictures?" Dean set the food and water out on the room's low dresser and then picked his duffel bag up off the floor and tossed it onto the bed closest to the door.

"When you went out of the cave to call the sheriff, I took some pictures with my phone. Some footprints on the cave floor and the, uh--" He continued more quietly, "her wounds."

"Good thinking."

Sam nodded, setting the laptop on the small table and opening it up, taking another drink of coffee.

"Hey," Dean called over to him, "let me check my mail before you download those photos."

"I just want to see if they--"

"Dude, it's my laptop. Move over, eat your sandwich."

Sam sighed, but complied. He grabbed his dinner from across the room and sat down on his bed to eat it. Dean took his time reading his e-mail while he ate, even though there wasn't much worth reading, just a couple of digest posts from a mailing list that occasionally turned up good leads. He knew that Sam would never eat his dinner in front of pictures of that girl's clawed-open body. He couldn't make his brother sleep, but he could bully him away from the case for a few minutes. It was all he could do.

A few minutes later, when he saw that Sam was finishing off his chips, Dean closed his e-mail and stood up from the table. "All yours, man. I'll be right back."

He walked out into the parking lot and leaned back against the side of the Impala, taking a deep breath of the cool, clean night air. "Aw, screw this." He pushed away from the car and walked back across the road to the store.

"Back again so soon?"

Dean nodded at the woman and turned toward the cooler. Six-pack in hand, he walked back up to the counter. "One of those nights."

"Know whatcha mean, honey."

Dean paid and then walked back across the highway with his beer. He looked at Sam's silhouette, bent over the laptop and thought about going inside, watching TV, watching Sam pore over the laptop. With a sigh, he hopped up on the car and leaned back against the windshield, legs stretched out across the expanse of the hood. He opened his first beer and drank it straight down. Put the empty back in the bag and opened the second beer.

He let his head drop back and stared up at the stars in the clear black sky. As he sipped the second beer and the third, he listened to the engines of the cars and trucks that passed behind him intermittently. He watched the occasional plane fly overhead and kept an ear open for any approaching steps that might crunch across the gravel.

After an hour, he sat up, shook himself out of the light daze he'd fallen into, and slid off the car. Back inside the room Sam had the laptop open, along with Dad's journal.

"Hey, I got some partial footprints in the pictures. If I can just find something to match that or the, uh, claw marks, we'll have some idea of what we're dealing with out there."

Dean glanced at the photos on the laptop screen and walked across the room to stow his remaining beers in the mini-fridge. "You planning on getting some sleep?"

"Yeah, sure," Sam replied distractedly, not looking away from the screen. "Once I get this finished up."

"You could take a break, you know. People do that from time to time."

"I just need to get it done."

Dean looked at the lines of stress between Sam's eyes and the huge cup of coffee next to his hand and just nodded. "Yeah, okay. I'm hittin' the sack."

"Okay." Sam clicked onto another screen and scrolled down, a series of footprints tracking up the screen. Werewolf, black dog, harpie… Dean turned away, stripped down to his boxers and crawled between the sheets. He hated sleeping while Sam was working, but the last few days of driving had worn him down, and the beers smoothed things out enough that he slid into sleep.

He woke to Sam shaking his feet. "Hey. Hey, we've gotta get a move on."

Cave ghouls. Sam had matched the footprints and claw marks, and that gave them enough information to work with. After spending the first half of the day tracking down materials in the nearest town big enough to support a well-stocked herb-supply store and most of the afternoon racing around the countryside lighting fires with slow-burning charcoal and packets of herbs at every entrance to the cave system, the fight itself was simple.

The smoke, heavy and redolent of rosemary, clove and wolfsbane, drove the ghouls out of the tunnels and into the main cavern, the same cavern where Sam had held the little girl's body under his hands. Six cave ghouls, dazzled by the golden remnants of daylight that filtered into the cavern, were no match for two Winchesters armed with battle-axes, and the axes swung to remove six large-jawed heads from six bony, pearl-white bodies.

Dean slid his card into the motel room lock and turned around to watch Sam drag his ass up out of the Impala. "You coming any time soon?"

"Yeah, hold your horses."

Sam's voice sounded quiet and slow, and Dean frowned, realizing that Sam looked completely exhausted. "You can just crash out if you want. I can take care of the gear."

"Thanks, but no." He walked past Dean into the room. " I've got to do some more research on these things."

"Hey, we smoked 'em. They're not going to be hurting any more kids."

"Yeah, I know, but there could be more of them. I've got to do some more searching on reported bear attacks in this region. Look for patterns, areas where there are mostly just kids getting killed. This could be huge, Dean. There are cave systems all over the country."

"You're right, but I don't see why it all has to be taken care of today."

"The sooner the better."

"Sam--"

"Look, I'm not going to be able to relax until I have some idea what we're dealing with, how widely they might be dispersed, what the population density is like."

Dean wanted to continue arguing but the haunted look in Sam's eyes stripped him of his will to fight the issue. "Yeah, alright."

Sam sat down at the table and opened up the laptop, and Dean turned away, looking around at the four walls of the room. He couldn't stand the thought of staying here while Sam hung over the computer looking like he hadn't slept in a month. Short of drugging his brother or cold-cocking him, there wasn't much he could do, but he still couldn't stand to watch it.

He wanted to help Sam, wanted to tell him to forget it, wanted to stuff him in the car and drive all night until they found somewhere with no caves at all, but he'd lived with stubborn men all his life, and he knew how to tell a battle he couldn't win. He paced around the room, watching how Sam's shoulder's tensed up under his t-shirt every time Dean got close.

They were driving each other crazy, and he needed to get out to have any hope of making things better.

"I'm, uh, going to go for a drive. See if there's anywhere around here to get a drink."

"Okay," Sam muttered, already concentrating on the screen in front of him. "Pick me up a coffee on your way back?"

Dean coughed out a dry laugh. "What's new?" Shaking his head, he left the room.

Back in the Impala, coasting down the highway, he didn't even bother looking for a bar. He just drove with the windows open, enjoying the cool air on his face as dusk fell. He turned off the radio and listened to the sounds of the engine thrumming and the wheels rolling across asphalt.

When he felt like he'd gotten a grip on his worry and frustration, he turned the car around and headed back to the motel. Remembering Sam's request for another caffeine infusion, he stopped at the store across from the motel. He filled a medium-size coffee cup with sweetened decaf this time and, not sure if he'd actually go through with it, bought a single-dose packet of Benadryl from behind the counter.

Drugging a man was an underhanded thing to do, but a little allergy medicine couldn't hurt Sam anymore than he was already hurting himself by denying himself sleep. He left the convenience store and pulled across the road into the motel parking lot. Sitting in the car for a moment, he looked at the line of light shining out around the edges of the drapes on the window of their room. He pulled out the packet of pills and considered them briefly before stuffing them back in his pocket with a muttered curse.

Coffee cup in hand, he got out of the car and opened the door to the room only to freeze at the sight that greeted him. Sam had finally crashed. His arms were folded across the keyboard of the laptop, and his head slumped down on top of them. He'd been asleep for long enough that the computer had lapsed into power-save mode, the screen dark.

"Jesus, Sammy. Finally," Dean whispered to himself as he sat down on the edge of the bed behind Sam's chair. He looked at Sam's back, broad but curled in on itself as he slept. He looked uncomfortable, sleeping sitting up like that, but Dean was afraid that if Sam woke up he wouldn't go back to sleep. He walked back over the table and slowly extricated the laptop from under Sam's arms. At least he wouldn't have to get permanent keyboard markings on his arms.

Sam reacted to the change with only a brief snuffle in his breathing and then settled in further, with his arms down on the table. Dean placed his hand lightly on Sam's back and felt that he was shivering slightly in his t-shirt. They'd have to pick up a new hoodie for him, next store they passed on the highway. Dean thought about the way Sam had insisted on staying with that girl, the way he'd covered her wrecked body with his own shirt. The way he'd sacrificed nights of sleep to save this town from being victimized any longer.

Dad would be proud, if he knew. Dean felt proud, and the combination of pride and love and concern he felt for his brother felt like a weight on his chest, something that he didn't know how to dislodge.

"You did good," Dean whispered to his brother's sleeping form. "You deserve some rest." He pulled his leather jacket off and draped it around Sam's shoulders, hoping that the heavy warmth of it would help him sleep more comfortably.

Dean stripped down to his boxers, turned out the lights, and crawled into his bed nearest the door, glad to be only a few feet away from where Sam slept. He set his internal alarm to wake him up when Sam stirred. Everything else could wait until tomorrow.


End file.
